Sometimes, the more you study, the dumber you get.
Although it seems counter intuitive at first, it's completely true. I'll give you a quick little example. Earlier this week, after a late night studying, I slept through my alarm. Blast. Upon realizing I was late, I jumped out of bed (literally), threw a hoodie on (And pants. And shoes. And all the rest of the stuff.), put on my glasses, and ran out the door. While I was riding the bus, I noticed that my vision seemed a little....off. For some reason, my left eye seemed like it couldn't focus correctly. Being a medical student, this scared me to death.
So...I need to make a comment here. For the record, I do not have a monopoly on thinking I am going to die from a rare medical condition. Generally speaking, most medical students are hypochondriacs. But hey, when you study diseases all day every day, it's impossible to not think you have some of them. Plus, just about every disease includes symptoms of fatigue, headache, blurry vision, diarrhea, fever, rashes in weird places etc. And I can tell you from experience that most med students have a lot of those symptoms pretty regularly. haha. So, it's only natural to think we are dying.
Ok, back to my story. We haven't studied optic or neurological stuff much, so I just used my medical school imagination to diagnose myself right there on the bus. I decided I had a tumor on my my optic tract. I mean what else could it be? After that, my mind jumped to other questions. Had it metastasized? What stage was the tumor? I looked at the guy on my left. Could he give my eulogy? Uh, no, definitely not. Guy on my right? He looked pretty respectable.
Right as I'm about to ask a complete stranger to give my eulogy, I noticed something. Even though my left eye seemed out of focus, it seemed clearer at the same time. I took off my glasses and looked at them. In my hurry to get out the door, I had knocked the left lens out of my glasses, and somehow (really not sure how), I didn't realize it. So.....the good news is that I don't have an optic tumor. The bad news is that I wore my glasses without one of the lenses for an hour and didn't realize it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how, studying a lot can make your brain dumb. Like I said earlier, it's counter intuitive, but it's totally true.
Quick hitters
- #1. I ain't got no money, honey. As a college student (when you have zero dollars in the bank), and even moreso as a medical student (when you have negative dollars in the bank), you keep an eye out for good deals. I can still remember the day I found three avacados for a dollar. One of the best moments of my time here in medical school. This happened several times that week:
Anyways, my friend Sarah told me about an all you can eat gelato deal that only happens on Wednesdays in February. Being a gelato lover, I had to check it out. When the smoke in the air cleared, I'd eaten $32 worth of gelato, which was definitely worth the $7 price of admission. Here are the flavors I tried: salted caramel, blood orange, mint chocolate chip, coconut, chocolate, raspberry, nutmeg, pistachio, and a bunch of italian flavors that I can't recall at the moment. It was delizioso, as they say in Italia. Here's a picture of Sarah and me, post gelato gorge. Apparently, one of the side effects of eating that much gelato is that your eyes turn into deer-in-headlights eyes:
- #2. GI is going to kill me. So, I studied fooooorrrreeevvver for my GI quiz this weekend. We've only been in the GI system for 2 weeks, but it feels like we've been in it for three months. Guess this means I'm not going to be a gastroenterologist. Anyways, I thought I did a good job preparing for my quiz. I definitely put in a lot of time. As soon as I opened the quiz, though, this is basically what happened:
Apparently, GI is a little tougher than I thought it would be. That being said, in the beautiful words of Gloria Gaynor, I will survive!
- #3. Partypartypartyparty. On Friday, I took a lil' time out of my study schedule to go to the EBSP. What is the EBSP you say? Well, officially it is the End of Basic Science Party, a black tie event celebrating the second year students' completion of classes and Step 1 boards. Unofficially, it's an open bar, loud music, "we haven't been outside our apartments for weeks because we've been studying for boards and now we are trying to get un-awkward before rotations" type of party. Since the second years were gracious enough to invite all the students in the med school, I decided to swing by for a few minutes. Even though Mormons don't drink alcohol, I had a ton of fun hanging out with all my classmates. Unfortunatly, I'm the worst at taking pictures, so all I have is a grainy shot from a nearby security camera with an overzealous flash. But yeah, this is me on the way to EBSP:
#4. Study Song of the Week:
"Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons
If you couldn't tell, I love Imagine Dragons. I listened to it on repeat the whole time I was studying about upper and lower GI bleeds. Seemed appropriate. haha Here it is:
- #5. Medical word of the day:
Esophagogastroduodenoscopy
Try saying that five times fast. I certainly can't. We normally just say EGD.- #6. March Madness. I've always loved college basketball. It's probably my favorite sport to watch in person (Sorry, college football, as much as I love you, your five hour games in mid-November are borderline unethical). This week I attended the Duke-UVa basketball game. I got there 15 minutes early, but ALL of the student seats were taken. We ended up all the way up in the back. If our seats had been any higher up, I think I would've gotten altitude sickness. But UVa won! The students, of course, had to rush the court. Sports have definitely been one of the highlights of coming to UVa med. Students get in to every sporting event for free. Soccer, football, lacrosse, badminton, wateraerobics, chess, world of warcraft. You name it. All free. It's a dream come true. Here are some pictures from the game. Five points to Gryffindor if you can spot Mike Krzyzewski.
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